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November 10, 2008

The "Solid North"

by Karl Kurtz

We used to talk about the "solid South," the complete Democratic dominance of southern state politics from the 1880s until the Republican resurgence in the region in the 1990s. Now, at least for one election, it's the "solid North." Democrats control 19 of the 20 legislative chambers in the Northeast (21 of 22 if you prefer to call Maryland an eastern state) after the 2008 election. The only exception is the Pennsylvania Senate.

The events that made this possible were the remarkable swing to the Democrats in both chambers of the New Hampshire General Court in 2006 and the retention of that gain and the pickup of the Delaware House and the New York Senate in 2008.

As far as I can tell, this Democratic dominance in the Northeast has never before occurred in American history. In effect, the "system of 1896," in which the Republicans controlled virtually every legislative chamber in the region from 1896 to 1932, has been stood on its head by the 2008 election. Further evidence of this upside down effect comes from the South, where Republicans now are close to having a majority of the legislative chambers, thereby at least partially reversing the system of 1896 in which Democrats ruled in that region.

To be sure, one election in the first decade of the 21st century doesn't compare with nearly four decades of history at the beginning of the 20th century, but it's still a noteworthy event.

The switches in party control in New York and Delaware reversed long-held majorities. The 2008 election marks only the second time that the New York Senate has been held by Democrats since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a one-time New York state senator, was in the White House. The Delaware House has been under Republican control since 1984.

Democrats had a net gain of 37 seats in the region over the two-year period since 2006, including special elections and the 2007 New Jersey election. They now hold 66 percent of the seats, also a historic high for the Northeast.

The Democratic dominance in the Northeast is not quite complete both because of the Pennsylvania Senate and because Republicans hold the governorships in Vermont, where Jim Douglas was reelected last week, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island, which did not have gubernatorial elections this year. Those four states have divided party control of state government.

Here are a few other tidbits from the election:

Maine, a state with one of the oldest populations in the country, elected eight legislators in their 20s to the House. Connecticut also elected four young legislators. The Hartford Courant says of them, "They Twitter, they blog and, of course, they all have Facebook pages, but it was the old-school elements of retail politics — knocking on doors, standing at supermarkets — that made the difference."

The Democratic majorities are veto-proof in Rhode Island, where Democrats hold 90 percent of the seats in both chambers combined, in Massachusetts (89 percent), and in Connecticut (74 percent).

The narrowest majorities are in Pennsylvania. The Republican majority in the Senate is 29-20 with one vacancy. Democrats have a 104-99 edge in the House, up from 102-101 in the last biennium. It's possible, though, that the House would choose to elect a Republican speaker again, as they did after the 2006 election.

The congressional results put an exclamation point on the Democrats' success in the Northeast. For the first time ever, Republicans will not hold a single seat in the U.S. House in the New England states. Was the reverse ever true, that Democrats held no congressional seats during the system of 1896? I don't have the answer to that question at my fingertips. Let me know if you have the answer.

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Karl: I am very much enjoying your post-election analysis. Keep it up. However, in the Pennsylvania Senate, the split is not 29-28. We have 50 Senate seats, and the current split is 29 Republican to 20 Democratic. (There is one open seat, which will be filled in a special election early next year. The late Senator James Rhoades was re-elected approximately two and a half weeks after he died following a car accident.)

>>>Was the reverse ever true, that Democrats held no congressional seats during the system of 1896? I don't have the answer to that question at my fingertips. Let me know if you have the answer.<<<

The last time a major party held no congressional seats in New England was the Democrats in 1865-1867, when the Republicans held 10/10 in Massachusetts, 4/4 in Connecticut, 2/2 in Rhode Island, 3/3 in Vermont, 2/2 in New Hampshire, and 5/5 in Maine.

I was also double-checking the congressional delegations in New England. It looks like from wikipedia (not always the most reliable source) that Vermont had a Whig member, Juston Morrill, from 1855 to 1967. That gets you back to before the modern Republican party. So, I think that maybe New England has never been under one party control until now.

That's 21 of 22 if you include Delaware, which only makes sense if you do MD. WV is also all-Democratic, and VA is split.

During the Solid South era, there were virtually no Republican members of Congress from states that had belonged to the Confederacy. The few exceptions came in Appalachian areas in the shallow (?) South--KY, TN, NC.

DS: is that entire congressional delegations, or just House delegations?

New England has 22 House seats (likely 21 after the 2010 reapportionment). What's also interesting is that if you add New York into this calculus, with its 29 House seats, that's now 26 Democrats and just 3 Republicans. So this trend seems to be expanding not only throughout New England but also into formerly Republican parts of upstate New York. NY looks to lose 2 seats in the next reapportionment, but I find it truly remarkable that out of 7 contiguous states with 51 House seats, there are 48 Dems and just 3 Republicans.

>>>It looks like from wikipedia (not always the most reliable source) that Vermont had a Whig member, Juston Morrill, from 1855 to 1967.>>DS: is that entire congressional delegations, or just House delegations?<<<

Just House delegations (I haven't checked the Senate delegations for 1865-1867).

I don't know about the 'system of 1896', but after the 1896 elections, Democrats held exactly one House seat in New England — a Boston seat held by John F. Fitzgerald, grandfather (and namesake) of John F. Kennedy.

Also, you seemed to have skipped Delaware in your regional breakdown. You left both Maryland and Delaware off the Northeast breakdown, but only included Maryland in the South breakdown. Poor little Delaware is overlooked once again.